Marketing Concept – Travel to Cyprus For Individuals March 5, 2010 at 7:33 am
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This article will contain my personal opinion on creating a marketing campaign for Travel to Cyprus, what I will mention below might not directly intertwine with your current operations, but it is only to be taken as a guide, and I and TW Web Design accept no responsibility for any damages or loss caused because you followed this article exactly.
Now that the introduction is out of the way, let the article begin.
Start a “Travel to Cyprus” Campaign
In order to start an effective Travel to Cyprus online marketing campaign, you first need to come up with a package of what you will offer people who are interested in traveling to Cyprus.
First and foremost is of course a flight. Organizing low cost flights is vital to your campaign, as you will need to keep you initial cost of the package as low as possible. In this new age of low cost budget airliners, people are becoming more accustomed to traveling in less comfort, therefore use this to your advantage, and approach budget airlines that fly to Cyprus about package deals for large parties.
Secondly is accommodation once your customers get to Cyprus. This also plays a major role in your cost factor, as depending on length and the Hotel chosen, this can be a very expensive commodity in your package deal. However in Cyprus you will generally find that no matter the star rating of the hotel, most of them offer the same basic services, and the breakfast is almost the same (The Four Seasons in Limassol and the Amathus in Paphos are the exception to the breakfast offered). Therefore look for a smaller or corporate run hotel, as their cost per person are generally much lower than the upper echelons of Hotels in Cyprus. The other thing to look at when choosing accommodation is the actual City that your customers will be staying in, as Larnaca, Paphos and the other Eastern Towns (Agia Napa, Protaras) generally are cheaper than Limassol and Nicosia. Also with Nicosia, unless you are offering a corporate Travel to Cyprus package, there is not much to be done there that can’t be done in a day trip to the capital.
Thirdly on your list of requirements for your package are activities. Having activities built into your package can actually help you make more profit on your package offer, as trips generally have low over heads depending on the size of your group. Although activities are not essential, they can make a package more attractive to certain demographic profiles.
The first two elements are the most important, as Cyprus has beautiful beaches, and roaring night life, allowing tourists to pretty much take care of themselves when on holiday.
Once you have gotten all of the prices together for these elements, and prepared a package that will be attractive to potential customers, it is time to move on to phase 2 of your Travel to Cyprus campaign.
Marketing your “Travel to Cyprus” Campaign
Once your package is ready to go, you are ready to market it. There are three major customer types that you will look at marketing to, and each one will have different marketing strategies.
Family and Friends: If your target customer base is family and friends, the main form of marketing to be used to promote this package will be word of mouth. As this customer base is effectively a network of people close to you, or close to your family very little work is needed in the marketing of this campaign. Word-of-Mouth marketing can be backed up by a small amount of offline marketing, in the form of brochures or leaflets. The main problem however with this customer base is that your profit will be minimum, if you make any profit at all, as to meet your numbers you will need to ensure that your package is the best value for money available.
Families and Young people: Although there is a major difference between the two demographical profiles of these types of customers, effectively they are both looking for the same thing when planning to travel to Cyprus, fun and the sun. Although both of these demographics are looking for different types of fun, they are looking for fun all the same.
To effectively market these packages, you will need to approach both online and offline marketing channels. For offline marketing, you should target specific publications, each different, depending on the demographical sector you are targeting. You should also approach travel agents *(However this will eat at your overall profit as you will have to pay commission)*. Online targeting however will be a lot easier, as you can used major package holiday sites to market online.
You can also create a website for your company that is specifically designed for the reason of offering package holidays online. Once you have created your website you can then promote the website via PPC marketing, e-mail marketing, CPM marketing, or even by using affiliates. However unless you are looking at providing package tours not only to Cyprus, but also to other major European and worldwide holiday destinations, the investment in a website and the internet marketing campaigns will not be worth it.
Corporate customers: Corporate customers for your Travel to Cyprus package deal are a good target market to aim for, as they are generally willing to pay more for their Travel packages in order to get better quality flights and accommodation. Marketing to corporate clients can be done with two different types of campaigns. One is to present a complete packages to the customer, including flights, accommodation and activities, this can then be branded as a team building holiday. The other option is to put together a package with flights, accommodation and conference facilities, then this can be promoted under the brand of a corporate conference.
Once you have created a Travel to Cyprus package tailored for corporate customers, you can then go about promoting it both online and offline. Offline marketing can be done with the use of letters and leaflets posted to the company, advertisements in leading corporate media, specifically newspapers and magazines or by approaching the company directly, and presenting the package directly to the decision makers of the company. Online, the only effective way to promote this corporate travel to Cyprus package would be via e-mail or a website that is search engine optimized to be found for the relevant keywords online or promoted via PPC search engines.
This is an effective way of marketing your Travel to Cyprus package to the people who you would like to target, there are other ways of promoting your travel package, but some are either too ineffective, or too expensive to make them viable options for individuals looking to market Travel to Cyprus packages.
Conclusion:
This article does not contain the exact details of how you can go about doing the actual marketing; it only advises you on where you should advertise your packages. For more details on how to do the actual marketing, please check out our articles in our content section, or click on the keywords above for more details on the specific marketing channels to be used.
As mentioned before, this is only a guide to approaching travel packages. It does not strictly apply to the Cyprus market, however due to my lack of experience with other major holiday markets; I have used Cyprus as a base for this article.
This article is also not targeted at major travel agencies and other large travel based companies, as their marketing strategies will be quite different from the ones I have mentioned above. Once again I need to stress that this is only a rough guide, and should not be taken as anything more than that.
Be on the look out for the next article in the series: Travel To Cyprus For Individuals, where still to come is the Design Concept where we will produce draft designs to demomstrate how to bring this marketing concept to life.
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